A Montessori Thanksgiving

Preparing a Thanksgiving Feast in a Montessori Classroom

1. Decide what you want to prepare with your class.

In our 3-6 classroom, we made apple butter, cornbread, vegetable soup, and butter.

2. Choose what job everyone will be doing.

When it comes to preparing a feast, there are many jobs with multiple difficulty levels. We sorted out the steps and figured out what job would be best for each child in our class. With anything from stirring to writing place cards, every age child will have an important task to complete!

3. Prepare the “works”.

In our class, we had color coordinating trays and baskets, matching the color of the different foods used. (An orange tray for carrots, a green tray for celery, etc.) Make sure to prepare any extra works that you may want to include as well. (For example, Place Card Writing or Flower Arranging.)

Chopping red peppers

Chopping sweet potatoes

Chopping carrots

Chopping celery

Chopping potatoes

4. Discuss the importance of everyone’s job.

We had a special circle time where we talked about everyone having a different job. No two jobs were the same, but every job is an important and necessary part of our feast preparation!

5. Make your Thanksgiving dishes.

Our children LOVED helping make our food! After they finished preparing their ingredients, they got to put them directly into the larger bowls (or crock-pots), which was a nice visual for them to see exactly how they were helping out. After all of the larger ingredients were combined, the teachers helped the children measure the dry ingredients and sauces into the mix. Our food was now ready to cook!

During this time, we also had a small circle where children passed around a tightly sealed jar of heavy whipping cream. They shook the jar for several minutes to create fresh butter!

This is also when we had our student begin working on place cards for everyone.

Place card making

6. Prepare the table.

Another important part of the Thanksgiving feast is making the table look beautiful! After arranging the tables, one teacher read stories and played games with the children in a separate area of the classroom while the other teacher helped some of the students set the tables. One child set out placemats, another folded napkins, one set out and poured the water, while another child worked on place settings. We even had a child create some beautiful flower arrangements!